Phil and Holly have become the unnecessary villains

Reflecting on the fortnight following the Queen’s death, Will Gore wonders what memories will stick with us

Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield at the Queen’s lying-in-state (ITV)

I am forever telling my children to look for the positives. When I’m greeted in the morning by a mournful “I don’t wanna go to school”, I suggest to my daughter that she focuses on the lesson she knows she’ll like. When my son wails at the prospect of going shopping on a Saturday, I remind him that the nice lady at the butcher’s shop will probably give him a lolly.

Sometimes, my advice to look on the bright side wins through in unexpected ways. On Thursday my son remarked how great it was to have had a short week: “That’s the good thing about the Queen dying,” he concluded. “The other positive,” he continued, now on a roll, “is that Charles is finally king after all those decades of waiting!”

Finding the upsides of a monarch’s death isn’t perhaps what I have in mind when exhorting the kids to be optimists, but my son’s words did get me thinking about how the past couple of weeks may be remembered. After all, it has without question been a remarkable moment in our national story, and a period of very mixed emotions.